This panorama is a composite of several images.

(click on image for larger version)

Gallery: Dane County Farmers’ Market on the Square – Madison, Wisconsin, September 13 and 20, 2008, on the streets around the state capitol building

Here’s what the radar looks like for us this evening.  Red bordered areas are tornado warnings.

We’ll be watchin’ late this evening, I think.  I’ll post an update in the morning.

Last evening was one of those interesting severe weather evenings.

We knew that storms were approaching and I had just seen that there was a tornado warning for our area, but it looked like the storm cell was going to pass south and east of us.

Then our phones started ringing – all three of them.

We’re subscribed to a severe weather warning service from one of the Arkansas television stations.  It calls us when there is a tornado warning for our area.  It is a lot more specific than the National Weather Service warnings.

It was time to head for the storm shelter.

We only stayed down there for about ten minutes.  We waited until we could tell that the intensity of the thunder and lightning was dropping.

Some areas got hit pretty hard, from what we’ve gathered so far.  One of the tornadoes had gone very near the Little Rock airport and they had to shutdown operations for a while.  Fortunately, our daughter, who had been in Dallas for a week on business, had been on a plane that landed before the severe weather got to the Little Rock area.

Our forecast for today includes the possibility of severe weather, but it’s much less likely than yesterday.

Here’s a short video from my new phone of some of this morning’s rain.

Another awesome video from the volcano. (video from ITN)

In this video of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, shock waves can be seen emanating with each explosive  pulse of lava, clearly causing displacement of the cloud of smoke, ash, and steam.

(pronounced [ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥], listen (help·info))

‘No end in sight’ for volcano ash – Alijazeera

Risk of Katla: Could 2nd Icelandic Volcano Eruption Follow? – Huffington Post

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano –Detroit Fee Press

Volcanic Eruption in Eyjafjallajökull – Flickr set

Click on photo to see larger version

Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, September 13, 2009

The mountain on the horizon is said to resemble a man laying on his back with his arms crossed on his chest.  Its name is Sleeping Ute Mountain.

While it was pretty dry during our visit to Mesa Verde — there was a fire ban and no campfires allowed — there was a daily threat of rain.  We did get rain one day, but it lasted only a short period.  Dry conditions are normal here and there is evidence all over the park of numerous fires that have occurred over a long period.

The Knife Edge Trail is a 2 mile round trip walk along the north rim of Mesa Verde National Park. It takes about l 1/2 to 2 hours to walk the trail.

Historically, part of the Knife Edge Trail follows a section of the Knife Edge Road built in 1914 as the main access into the park. Along the trail you may see patches of asphalt that remain from this road. Old-timers still proudly talk about what a feat it was to build, or “hang,” a road on this steep bluff. Users recall it with a bit of dread because of its narrowness, the unexpected rock slides and its slippery ruts.

Gallery: Cliff Palace and More — September 13, 2009, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado, August 24, 2004

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is a national monument noted for its fossils in Teller County, Colorado, United States. It is located in a mountain valley just west of Pikes Peak and holds spectacular remnants of prehistoric life.  (Wikipedia)

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Old Colorado City, Colorado Springs, August 22, 2004

There was some sort of festival in progress, including vintage cars, the day that we visited Old Colorado City, along with dark skies and a storm brewing up over by Pikes Peak.

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This is a day at work  — a week — that’s hard to rearrange and/or reschedule.

It wasn’t supposed to do this until later in the day… but at 4:30 AM we already had a bit of white stuff.

… and road conditions are already deteriorating (blue is snow covered, green is slush).

The Arctic Oscillation has become strongly negative again.

We’ve been watching this storm system move our way all week – and we’ve been getting ready for it.

Yesterday, the weather forecast was that we could get as a .75 inch coating of ice on trees and power lines – enough ice to be disastrous.

Fortunately, though, the ice here didn’t get more than a quarter of an inch. Fortunately, the freezing rain changed to sleet and, later, snow.

It was enough, though, that we didn’t venture out all day – no need.  We’ve got about 4 inches of snow on top of the ice.

We were ready, though, just in case.

One of the first things I did was to move the motorhome between the house and the shop.  The area where it is normally parked is next to and under several large pines.  After our close call last year, when an ice storm dropped branches, power lines and even whole trees not too far north of us, we decided that we would move it to a safer location if another ice storm was forecast for our area.

We also made sure we had enough groceries, which we did.

Just in case we lost power like we did last year, I had topped off the fuel tank in the motorhome.  I also moved our other smaller generator up to the front porch and made sure I found the cords for running power to the refrigerator, fireplace blower, computers and TV.

Despite the winter weather we’ve had this year, we haven’t lost power this season – yet!

The thermometer has not gotten above freezing for over a week.

While we get snow here almost every year, it’s usually melted within 2 or 3 days and, even if we get as much as a foot like we did 2 years ago, it’s gone within a week.

A week ago we had a trace of snow, not even enough to measure.  It’s been so cold that some of that trace of snow is still on the ground in areas that are shaded all day long this time of year.

I’m not complaining.  We’ve lived in colder places.  One winter in the 70s, when we lived in a high mountain desert town in Idaho, it didn’t get above 0°F for a month and was below -20°F for a week.

And, in the almost 30 years we’ve here, we’ve had had other long cold periods.

But, that was then, and this is now.

Brrrrr!

In the UK, elderly customers at charity shops are buying up hardback books – as cheap fuel.

Cheaper than coal?

One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.

A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’

read the full article in metro.co.uk, Pensioners burn books for warmth.

… more than a tad unusual lately, here in Arkansas, as I’m sure it seems to people in a lot of other places.

But, the weather for the next week is…, well…, ah…, it’s Winter!

It’s winter like winter was when I was a kid growing up in Nebraska.  It’s cold – and it’s staying cold.

And it’s doing it in a lot of places other than Arkansas.

Something called the Arctic Oscillation has gone into a deep negative phase, where atmospheric pressure in the Arctic is relatively high, while pressure is low in the middle latitudes.  In the negative phase, frigid winter weather extends further  into  the middle of North America than usual.

Hopefully, this thing will moderate soon – but I’m not counting on it.

How’s the weather where you are?

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Many scientists and others who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming would like the answer to one question that, so far, has not been answered:

While there is laboratory evidence that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide and global temperature have both been rising, real world proof that CO2 has caused the rise in global temperature does NOT exist.

While, at times,  there appears to be a rough correlation between CO2 and global temperature, correlation does not prove causation.

Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some historical warming resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans. However, because of the physical properties of CO2, it’s done all the warming it can do.

Predictions of rising temperatures and the dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming are based on computer climate models.  The climate models include the assumption that global temperatures will rise as CO2 continues to rise.

Over the last decade, global temperatures have leveled off while CO2 continued to rise.  Temperature is trending below all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions.

Joanne Nova, an Australian freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host, has prepared and published two excellent — and free — booklets on global warming.  The first, The Skeptics Handbook, has been translated by volunteers into many other languages, including German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.

The sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth.  The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008, nearly 20 months ago.  Since 2004 there have been 770 days without sunspots.  A typical solar minimum averages about 485 days.  Solar magnetic activity continues to drop.

A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.

“Tricks” apparently have been performed on more climate data than just the tree ring proxy information.  The figure below shows the adjustments made to the historical temperature record of Darwin, Australia.  The blue lines show the values for the original, “raw” temperature data. The red lines are the official NOAA/GHCN  ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Global Historical Climate Network) data  after the values have been “homogenized” and averaged.  The black line are the values for the adjustment that was made (uses the scale on the right of the figure).

“Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century …” – Willis Eschenbach, The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

American climate sceptics are now demanding a thorough investigation of NASA’s earth science programme, including the possibility that instruments on its satellites have been “tweaked” to give a “correct” result, and pointing out that the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data, going back to the 1930s. The common factor between CRU East Anglia and NASA is the destruction or withholding of research models and data which, if they are reliable, should be their pride and joy – documentation that would secure these institutions’ place in history, like Einstein’s equations. Telegraph.co.uk

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
May 6, 2009
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park images
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Haw Creek galleries

April, 1935
Prowers County, Colorado.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8e03000

Madison River,
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

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“Around the Upper Loop” Yellowstone gallery

check out our Yellowstone information page

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day70

(Crowley’s Ridge State Park photo gallery.)

For the last night of our May 2009 trip, we stopped in northeast Arkansas at Crowley’s Ridge State Park.

Crowley’s Ridge rises 100 to 200 feet above the river plains of eastern Arkansas. A narrow arc of rolling hills, it extends from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, down to the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas at Helena.

The ridge was named for a War of 1812 soldier, Benjamin F. Crowley, whose war land grant was the first settlement in the area.

The park is located near Paragould in Green County at Benjamin Crowley’s original homesite and is one of the original six Arkansas state parks. Construction by the Civilian Conservation Corps began in 1933.

While our stay was just for one night, we did have the opportunity for a couple of good walks and a few pictures in the evening and the next morning before we left. However, As a result of heavy rain, our evening plans for cooking outside didn’t pan out.

In February 2009, Crowley’s Ridge, along with a wide section of Arkansas, Missouri, and Kentucky, experienced a damaging ice storm. Evidence of the storm can still be seen in the ragged appearance from broken and missing branches of many trees in the park and along hundreds of miles of the route we traveled on May 26 and 27.

Haw Creek Galleries

day 20

This firewood is all from last week's storm. There's still a little bit to be cut up yet.

One of many lillies in our yard.

Another lilly picture.

This rose plant has been in our yard "forever"

This hole in the ground is where the bottom of a broken section of pine trunk hit. It had broken off about 25 - 30 feet in the air and, based on annual rings, was 33 years old at the location where the trunk broke during last week's storm.

All that's left to clean up of the broken section of pine that broke.

day 14